The Greatest Sales Lead Source You Never Knew You Had

Mark Fidelman at Mindtouch says,

Ask Dean Onishi at RightScale what their number one sales lead source is for their products and he’ll tell you it’s their technical documentation support site.  That’s right, tech docs.

Doesn’t surprise me at all. Technical documents have great potential to be powerful sales and marketing tools, but they typically get overlooked as something you need to have that nobody will read. If that’s your view, then your materials won’t do a thing for you. In fact, they might actually hurt your marketing efforts.

On the other hand, technical media, when it’s done right, can excite your customers while showing them in a fun way how to use your product. Yes, I used “excite” and “fun” to describe technical documents. No, I don’t have a fever.

Here’s a few companies that believe in the power of their technical media:

• Samsung
• Nerf
• HTC
• Adobe

Each of these companies uses technical media in a different way, but they all understand the marketing and sales potential, and they’re capitalizing on it very well. And this is just a glimpse of the possibilities.

So let’s look at what these companies have done, and what you can do to increase the power of your marketing with technical materials.

Easy to Use

I can’t overstate this point: If your user guides are hard to use, your product will seem hard to use, and your customer will get frustrated and blame your company. But if your user guides are simple and easy, then your product will seem that much more usable and enjoyable, and your company will appear customer-oriented.

The example materials above are all very easy to use—some of them just require one button click! Even HTC’s more traditional PDF manual is impressive—it’s easy to read and understand, it’s well organized, and the illustrations are simple and clear.

Professional & Authoritative

If you’re going to put your company’s name on something—on anything—it had better live up to the company’s name. Everything your customer sees will influence their opinion of your company. That includes your documentation. People are so used to seeing bad user guides, when they see one that’s truly well done, they notice it.

So make sure your materials look professional and present themselves authoritatively. Not autocratically, but authoritatively. Definitive, reliable, unequivocal. When your materials look professional, your product will look professional and your company will be seen as a thought-leader.

Compelling

There’s something compelling about each of the examples above. Samsung’s guide is interactive; Nerf uses video to entertain and teach; HTC uses beautiful images and lots of white space to draw you in; Adobe’s site is exceptionally designed and looks high-tech. In each case, you’re drawn in to use the media—it makes you want to use it. And if you get interested in the tech doc, you get interested in the product. And that’s great marketing.

If you want compelling materials, start with basic graphic design principles: alignment, space, color, typography, etc. Use high-quality images and clean lines. Design with your customer in mind: are you marketing to teenage girls, artsy frat boys at Ivy League schools, or mid-career professionals aiming for the next level? Make sure your materials will appeal to the right audience.

Branded

Never let your customer forget who it is they’re impressed with. If they’re a potential customer doing product research, they’ll probably see your competitors’ materials too. And if they’re impressed with your materials and your product, but they forget it’s your product, what’s going to happen?

Instead, make sure you integrate your logo, your colors, your motto—everything that identifies the material and product as yours. Don’t go overboard—you don’t want to sacrifice the other principles—but make it clear whose product it is they’re reading about.

Public

Of course, you can’t market a product or make a sale if you don’t spread the word. Each of the companies above has made their materials public and easy to access. Nerf and Adobe, in particular, have videos on YouTube as well as their own sites, which maximizes their broadcasting reach.

Broadcast your technical media! Take advantage of the social sites your company already uses like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to get your user guides out there.

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Have anything to add? What do you think makes technical documents powerful marketing and sales tools?

Photo credit: Michael Hashizume